This movie is really not that bad. I men the story is a bit thin but the actors play quit well. And to think that this is a Jets first film its wary god. One cool thing about this movie is that you will find most of the characters of this film in a later film called The Shoaling Temple 3: Martial Arts of Shoaling. This movie deserves good grads

Jet Li's movie debut and the film that put him on the martial arts map at the tender age of 19. SHAOLIN TEMPLE is a very different beast to the Shaw Brothers flick of the same name, feeling very much like a classic mainland China production: lots of breathtaking outdoor scenery and real-world locations adding to the beauty of the picture. The plot has slight similarities to the Gordon Liu classic 36TH CHAMBER OF SHAOLIN in Li's transformation from impoverished escapee to kung fu master, but it ploughs a furrow all of its own. The cast is made up of real-life martial arts experts and combined with expert choreography the action is quite wonderful; there are moves and skills here you won't see elsewhere. A few moments of real and fake animal violence upset sensibilities a little, but overall it all works very nicely indeed. Two sequels followed.

My rating of early kung fu movies is probably 20% story and 80% fighting and choreography. I never rate them on acting because the acting is tertiary.

The fight choreography was decent. I thought some of the fights lasted too long. Usually every fight except those with bosses are over rather quickly. It seemed that even fights with the lower level henchmen dragged on longer than they should have.

Still, this was early Jet Li so it's always worth taking a gander.